To promote accessibility for all residents, Housing Board flats of the future may be built on prime land, said National Development Minister Lawrence Wong.
Mr Wong was responding to a question at the annual Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum, attended by 170 students from the National University of Singapore.
One student had raised concerns that several new and glitzy icons such as Marina Bay Sands were “not really a place for all Singaporeans because of the high cost of enjoying such a place”.
To address this, the government is putting accessibility at the forefront of planning the island nation’s extended “Central Business Districts” located in Jurong and the Greater Southern Waterfront extension, Mr Wong said.
“(We are) very mindful and conscious of this – be it having a hawker centre there, having gardens and parks, or even having HDB flats there – so that you have HDB residential living right in the city,” he added.
These centrally-located flats could come with differing lease periods, TODAY reported. The idea was mooted last year at an event by the Real Estate Developers’ Association of Singapore.
At the event, then Social and Family Development Minister Chan Chun Sing said that the solution to inclusiveness wasn’t as straightforward. A paper by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy also cautioned that having fewer HDB flats in the prime districts could lead to a division between “enclaves” of society.
“That has always been the basis of building our city, that it cannot be stratified, we don’t want a city that is exclusive,” Mr Wong explained.
He added: “You cannot have a person living in a three-room flat or an HDB flat saying: ‘This is not accessible to me, this is a city that’s only for the elites, and it’s not for me.”
Read TODAY for the full report.
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